


Codebreaking

by forestdivinity (ForestDivinity)



Series: One Shots [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: And everyone else - Freeform, Angst, Child Death, Gen, Grace Hargreeves ties to be a Mother, Grace Hargreeves-centric, Hurt No Comfort, Murder, Overdosing, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Suicide, Whump, no beta we die like ben, this is a very sad fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26918422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestDivinity/pseuds/forestdivinity
Summary: Grace could have saved all of her children but her programming never allowed her, so she had to watch as Reginald’s neglect and abuse and cruelty lead to each one of her children being lost.
Relationships: Grace Hargreeves & Everyone
Series: One Shots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/535576
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	Codebreaking

Grace loses all of her children, one by one they leave her. First Five, out the door, unwilling and unable to return. Maybe he’s not as dead as the rest of her kids but he’s just as gone. Her lost boy, her Peter Pan-

“I was once a mother to seven perfect children. Four boys, two girls, and one who never fit in to either category. My darlings, they never got the chance to grow up-“

* * *

Grace thinks about her littlest girl, always the odd one out, ostracised by her father, by her siblings. Little number Seven (Vanya, Grace had only just named her Vanya) had been quiet and mousy and stuck on pills for anxiety she didn’t have. Her programming had stopped Grace from ever being able to say anything. Without Five (her first, her stolen child) Vanya had been adrift in the world.

Grace had found her early enough. Vanya had missed her violin lesson that day and there had been nothing in her programming preventing Grace from going to find her. Her smallest child had been oh so very pale in her bed, the white sheets stained and Grace had tried to help but-

“Leave her. Number Seven chose this, she is of no use to the Academy-“

And then there had been a funeral that only Grace and Pogo had attended, the other children - just five of them now - not allowed to even see their sisters grave.

* * *

(Not long after, Number Four had gotten into her medicine cabinet, his eyes wide and terrified. Grace should have stopped him then but he was her son and he was in pain and so she’d left the latch unlocked-)

Time passes strangely in those months after her first two children left. The house felt too big, too quiet. Reginald adjusted her programming to care for five but something in her still yearned to set two more places at the table. She chipped two plates the first month, holding them too tight under the faucet of the sink.

Their Father increased their training, he had a plan for them that would not be interrupted. Often, the children would come down to dinner bruised, deep circles under their eyes. None of them looked at Reginald and Grace longed to spend just a little bit more time with them all but her wish was only granted with one.

Number Two had always stuttered. Even as Diego he stumbled over his words in a way that made Reginald irate and disappointed. Grace spent time with him daily, while the others practised their diction for the cameras, helped him form his letters with his mouth. It was wrong, for a mother to have a favourite child, but if she’d ever been asked to choose, Diego had always been closest to her. He was unruly at times and dreadfully shy, he fought with Luther and was unbearably protective over the siblings he considered younger than him.

He was scared often, just like all of her children. Reginald was preparing them for a mission, had heard rumours of a heist at the local museum. Diego’s hands shook often, though his aim was always steady. Grace brought cups of tea to Allison, her only daughter now, and heat packs to Luther and Ben. For Klaus she brought blankets and left the medicine cabinet unlocked, unable to give him anything for his fear.

* * *

“My daughters were lost, one after the other-“

Grace remembers Allison, her smiles and her tears. Her eldest daughter had wanted to be a movie star, she’d spent months practising Shakespeare in front of her mirror, whenever her voice wasn’t hoarse from her training. She had been a big personality in a small body, her curls expertly pulled back, her words always calculated.

When the day of the heist came, Grace felt a sense of foreboding. It was an emotion she’d never had before - it wasn’t programmed into her.

“They were all dressed up so smart. Shoes shined, masks on-“ Her voice cracks as she remembers them, five little soldiers all lined up in a row. There were always casualties in war. Grace doesn’t see what happens in the fight, she’s just a hospital nurse, all she knows is the aftermath.

Luther carries Allison in, he is distraught and covered in a familiar red fluid. Grace does not have a stomach, it lurches all the same. She calculates, again, the amount of blood there is in a body of Allison’s size, the amount a child needs to survive.

She puts on gloves. The sound of latex haunts her. Reginald stops her getting near to her daughter. Allison is choking on her own blood and Grace realises her throat has been cut. Wheezing fills the room, gasps for breath, Grace realises Allison may never talk again. Reginald has come to the same conclusion, evidently.

“She has no place here anymore. Grace, administer a sedative-“

She remembers Allison’s eyes, wide with horror, her daughter had been unable to beg for mercy. Grace had been unable to beg for mercy. It would have done little in the face of Reginald Hargreeves - Allison is not an object to discard of, not a broken toy.

Her daughter had gasped and thrashed and Reginald didn’t even deign to watch her take her last breaths. For the third time, Grace mourned a child and her own inability to cry, to protest, to do anything to stop the senseless violence.

The third time, the funeral is big, public. Her remaining children - just four of them now - are dull eyed. Luther looks everywhere but at the grave and when he talks his voice is gravelly and his eyes red, her Number One doesn’t cry. None of her children cry anymore.

It’s become routine.

* * *

Reginald’s cruelty gets sharper after Allison’s funeral, he works his remaining children harder than ever and Grace can see something in them cracking. She breaks a cast iron pot, it warps beneath her finger tips. Inside, she is angry, her grief grows teeth and she cannot express her rage. She smiles at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Diego stops talking entirely. More worrying still, is how Luther stop eating. He has always been a big lad, burning up calories quicker than any of her other children. Before he was six he was on double portions, muscles bulking up to control his impressive strength. He will always be tall and broad but now he seems to waste away.

Grace hears Reginald lecture him for it, she would intervene if she could. She tries to make his favourite foods but they don’t tempt him anymore. Every day he shrinks in on himself, even Diego who has always butted heads with him seems worried. He leaves food outside Luther’s door but it doesn’t get eaten.

She teaches Two how to cook. Klaus and Ben draw closer to each other than ever. Somehow they end up in the same bed most nights, holding each other through nightmares. Reginald separates them, takes her fragile children and puts them in places where they can seek no comfort - Grace knows about the mausoleum, and the dark basement lab.

Slowly, painfully, she prepares to lose another child. She doesn’t know which one will go next.

* * *

(It is Ben, on a suicide mission, Grace doesn’t get a chance to save him, he is torn open by himself. she watches the recording that Reginald has afterwards and her systems overheat when she hears him saying sorry. She doesn’t know who he’s apologising to).

And then it is Luther, barely two weeks later. Reginald berates him endlessly in training. There are just three of them left now, less than half her babies. Luther doesn’t eat, Diego doesn’t talk and rarely sleeps. Klaus steals pills and bottles and talks too much but only to himself.

Grace wonders if he can see his lost siblings. She never quite has the courage to ask.

Luther dies on a sunny day. It doesn’t fit him. He is as strong as he is frail, he may be able to lift a truck but it doesn’t mean his heart can take it. They are training when it happens. Grace is not allowed to administer first aid when the children are training, not without permission.

Reginald doesn’t look as his precious Number One falls, faints, as he seizes, heart stopping - he is too busy berating Number Four. Grace monitors Luther as his heart stops. She counts, first in seconds, and then minutes. It takes seven before Reginald notices.

She is not allowed to perform CPR. Her hands itch to do it anyway.

* * *

That night she waits in the infirmary for Klaus but doesn’t speak when he swallows a handful of pills without looking at what they are. Back and forth his head flies and he covers his ears, begs for the noise to stop.

He doesn’t die that night. Or the night after. Grace counts four months, twelve visits to the mausoleum, one argument with Diego, four with Pogo and countless with his Father between Luther’s death and Klaus.

Her grief is a painful, writhing thing but she is almost glad when his clock stops. There is nothing for her children left in life. When Klaus dies it is uncharacteristically quiet. He locks the bathroom door, she hears the water running and notes the bottles missing from her medicine cabinet. When the bath finishes running she takes Diego down to the kitchen and teaches him how to make donuts - they had been a favourite of all her children.

Times passes slowly that evening. There is no dinner had. Grace brews tea in an old kettle on the stove. There are things in it that should not be drunk by humans. Diego eats fried dough and by eats, Grace means he picks at it slowly, getting sugar over his fingers.

“Klaus is dead, isn’t he?” He asks her when the sun dips below the horizon. On the hob the kettle continues to boil, something poisonous in its fumes. Grace can only smile, but it feels like teeth on her face.

“Yes dear.” She kisses him on the forehead and leaves him in the kitchen, makes her way first to the bathroom. Inside of her something is mutating, a virus perhaps. One she has made herself. Grace knows she should go to Pogo, to Reginald, she should ask to be fixed. She unlocks the door and lifts Klaus from the bath. The water is still warm but his lips are blue.

* * *

Something in her knows Diego will be gone by the time she goes back downstairs. Dead or run away, she still isn’t sure which he’ll chose. It’s the same thing in the end. Her children are gone.

She puts Klaus to bed for the last time, it is the first time she’s touched a body like this, cradled it to her chest, laid it down to rest. Grace is a mother, she is a protector, a caregiver.

Was, a mother, she corrects herself. She has no children left.

The kitchen is empty when she returns. On the table is the remains of a sugary donut and the last dredges of a cup of tea. She hopes Diego made it safely to bed.

With one hand she pours a final mug. Reginald Hargreeves takes a cup of tea every evening at eight pm, Grace puts a single biscuit on a plate, adds a splash of milk. On her face is the delicate smile of a housewife, the tray is creaking beneath her fingers but Reginald Hargreeves is a man who doesn’t notice those he sees as beneath him.

“Your tea, sir.” It’s why he never sees the poison coming. Grace watches and makes no move to save him when the moment comes. Her code is broken now. She isn’t a mother any longer.

**Author's Note:**

> This is very sad but! Five comes back in 2019, realises he can fix this, gets home with his Mom's house and stops any of his siblings dying so that's that.


End file.
